If you’re viewing this page on a phone or tablet, please turn to view in landscape mode, thank you. If you can’t see the list of services on the right hand side please use the connecting links or scroll down for these and other events and information.

Updates and resources to use at home

• Update on Covid restrictions following the lifting of restrictions by the government on July 19th. The government has put emphasis on all of us taking care of our own well being and safety. Our policies are designed to respect those in our congregations who are more vulnerable, and those who wish to continue with the restrictions. Mindful of the anxieties from our congregation and visitors, the churches have a responsibility to support public health. We will therefore continue to strongly encourage all our visitors to wear face coverings, sanitise hands and register with the Test and Trace system when visiting or worshipping. More details are available in the monthly newsletter, which you can read here
  • In addition, our worship patterns will remain the same. We may experiment with singing of hymns, but with masks, which may be uncomfortable. Holy Communion will continue to be in one kind (the bread) only. We will continue to remain in our seats for the sharing of the peace. We will continue our strict cleaning regimes.
  • All our churches are open to visitors as places of interest, prayer and reflection.
  • We will continue to monitor and evaluate the situation and may change our advice as deemed necessary.
• We were delighted to reopen Messy Church in July, our session focused on the Miracles of Jesus.  The children engaged in a range of creative activities from mixing their own (non-alcoholic!) cocktails to colouring self-portraits.  Revd Lynn then gathered everyone together to read the Feeding of the Five Thousand and we ended with the Messy Grace followed by drinks and cake.
• The next Messy Church at St Germans Priory will be Saturday 4^th September.  Sessions will be from 10.00 am until 12 noon. . Read more about Messy Church in the monthly newsletter.
• Our worship and church life continues online in midweek and Sunday evening, led by Rev Lynn and the Ministry Team using Zoom software. These include morning and evening prayer and are still on most days of the week. Click here for details. Please contact Rev Lynn if you would like to join us, there is no requirement to live within our benefice, you would be most welcome! With our now having services in both in church and online on Zoom, we have become a “hybrid” church – a church that recognises that it is the being together that counts, more than where you are sitting, to worship God.
• Advance notice: Ecumenical said evensong with the Bishops of St Germans, +Hugh and his RC equivalent at the Priory has been rescheduled to September 10th. Details to follow.
• Lunches at St Nic’s – how might we move forward? Come to the meeting at 11.30am on Wednesday 8th September at the church to help plan what might be done. Click here for details
• Pub theology continues online……click here for details, now moved to Monday evening, monthly, starting from June 7th.
  
• Lynn’s letter can be found here and we learn more about Revd Dr Sacha J T Pearce, who works as chaplain at Derriford and is part of our ministry team.
  
• Our monthly newsletter can be downloaded here.
  

Online options

There are many options for worship and prayer online….

Or you could still listen to one of the many radio options – Radio 4, Radio Cornwall offer services on a Sunday around 8am.

Or you could look at: Church of England website that now has more services to join – or at many churches and cathedrals up and down the country who have other offerings

A very good resource is https://www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/church-online

Browse a whole range of prayers you can choose from to read – or listen to:

Or using your computer, tablet or phone (as you prefer) and from your web browser access morning and evening prayer using this link:

Click here and choose what you need.

To read or hear the prayer for today, click on this link: http://cofe.io/TodaysPrayer

Browse around the various pages and you’re sure to find something that interests you.

Alternatively download an App for your tablet or phone. Church House Publishing or provide a number of these Apps and these can be downloaded from https://www.chpublishing.co.uk/apps/daily-prayer

Parish Contacts

Parish Priest: Rev. Canon Lynn Parker – main point of contact for all matters

Curate: Rev. Laura Bushell-Hawke

Parish Wardens: Paul Gribble and Rosemary Stevenson

Readers/Licensed Lay Ministers: Richard Laugharne, Margaret Sylvester-Thorne, David Watters, Matt Frost

For weddings, baptisms, funerals and church services:  Rev. Canon Lynn Parker, David Watters and Margaret Sylvester-Thorne

Children’s work: Rev. Canon Lynn Parker, Evelyn Reed, David Watters, Margaret Sylvester-Thorne, Rev Laura Bushell-Hawke

Messy Church: Evelyn Reed

For buildings and general parish enquiries: the Parish Wardens:   Paul Gribble and Rosemary Stevenson

For Safeguarding:  Rev Laura Bushell-Hawke

Pastoral Visitors Team:  Pat Paxton

Parish Giving Scheme:  Paul Gribble

Finances: the Treasurer, Paul Gribble

Electoral Roll: Rosemary Stevenson

Enquiries about individual churches:

Downderry:  Andrew Pidgen

Hessenford: Fran Moore

St Germans: Richard Laugharne

Tideford: Evelyn Reed

Deanery Synod Reps:  David Watters,  Rosemary Stevenson and Paul Gribble

Cashiers: Peter Daw – St Germans; Tim Pullin – Downderry; Hugh Parker – Tideford and Fiona Bristow – Hessenford.

Additional PCC Members from May 2020

Tim Pullin, Stephen Guffick, Tilly Thompson, Yvonne Byles, Hugh Parker, Susan Booth, Dawn Couling, Fiona Bristow, and Bill Woods.

Hire and other info on St Germans Priory Church for events:

The St Germans Priory Trust:   www.stgermanspriory.info

Hire of the Church Hall in Hessenford:  http://www.hessenford.net

_________________________________________________________

Lynn’s letter:

Not long now!!

I want to start by thanking you all for being so patient. At the start of the pandemic everything was new and different, and we found new ways of living life and being church – but now it’s just dragging on and we want it finished and we want to get on and bring in new ways of living and being church.

But we must hold on, and not lose faith – there will be an end, and life will resume. Of course, it might not look quite the same, and sometimes that’s not a bad thing.

But what we need to be doing now is planning and getting ready.

There is a petition on Facebook to try and get singing back in churches again!

Do you have ideas of what you would like to see happen when restrictions are lifted?

As you will have read in this month’s newsletter we are getting ready to resume “Messy Church”, and there are new ideas in the pipe line for different services.

We have also been working with the schools in our Benefice a lot recently, and that has been very rewarding to see the enthusiasm and creativity going on.

So, it all sounds very positive – but hang on in there – not long now.

Yours in Christ

Canon Lynn

Click here to go back to top

For this month’s newsletter please click on this link August Newsletter

Continuing our series of who’s who within the benefice – this month it is the turn of Revd Dr Sacha J T Pearce, who works as chaplain at Derriford and is part of our ministry team.

“All things came into being through Him” says St John’s Prologue (John 1.3 NRSV), weaving an image of life with change as its very essence. This is life coming into its fullness through God’s presence woven deep within human experience. To ‘come into being’ means to grow as a whole person, to discover our true selves, who we really are, and whom God has called us to become. My journey of discovery inspires me to want to nurture that self-awareness in others. I have always thought of life as a pilgrimage through our human experience, our life story as it evolves. Perhaps that’s about growing up or else into our potential.

With Cornish roots in various places in Cornwall, I have a great sense of ‘coming home’ to live here right by the sea. My parents had a house in Mevagissey for a number of years and that was where we would be, out of term time away from school which was latterly in London. I really wasn’t sure what further education was right for me and, while being urged to sit the entrance exam for Oxford, I wanted to take a gap year and pick grapes in France! My family thought this wasn’t a good idea, so I decided to find something that gave me further education, somewhere to live and an income…and so I applied to train as a nurse in central London. My mother had been nurse and it seemed like a ‘waystation’ for me for the time being. So, at the age of 19 I was living in the middle of London within easy walking distance of Covent Garden and St Paul’s Cathedral, and learning a professional skill.

Having qualified and after a few years, I knew there was something else I needed to do and that it was time to go to university to study something else (nursing degrees were only just starting). Having grown up in quite a politically aware household, it seemed that subjects like politics, philosophy and economics would be a broad forum for learning so it was in these subjects that I got my first degree at Reading University. I became interested in political philosophy and war ethics and after graduating had a place for a Master’s in London. However, getting funding was difficult and I returned to nursing rather as before, a place to go in the meantime, and I worked both in London and in Oxford, now specializing in critical care.

Throughout, I continued to go to church on and off. I had sung in a church choir when I was younger and at one point was living and nursing in Oxford, attending a church in London and on the PCC! Quite a few miles to drive sometimes twice a week! I was also considering a different nursing role. However, there was still something more for which I was searching. It took several years for me to respond to the nagging feeling of being called to explore a vocational discernment to priesthood.

At ordination training selection a senior selector said that his first thoughts of me were ‘nurse or priest or both’. This evolution would I thought ‘take more of me, more of the time.’ During the latter years of nursing, I felt I was simply using a pattern of life saving skills, albeit taking care of different people in several contexts. However, I wanted to find a deeper sense of ‘me’ within the whole of my daily life. I also had a thirst to know who people really were, each as a unique person.

Nursing had taught me many things but I had learnt the name for a thought process I had been following intuitively for most of my life. This is called ‘reflective practice’ which means to learn from our experiences, a process of insight and self-awareness. It involves re-focussing on an experience, exploring what one can learn from it, and how this may change or develop us in any way. It came naturally to me and I wanted to help other people find that inner space and whatever this discovery may reveal for them.

So, called to ordination, I went back to Oxford, this time to study theology where in many ways in the past I had simply looked over the wall. On the day of my first ordination, now over 21 years ago, I knew that I was stepping out on the journey of the evolving ‘me’, into a deepening awareness that I had so much more to discover, to learn and become. Each step is far more than travelling but is inner journeying by endeavouring to discern God’s footsteps along the changing landscape of our daily experiences. Standing in the south aisle of Salisbury Cathedral, with my white stole over my left arm, as the procession began, I stepped into my life. From deacon and curate, to priest and rural parish incumbent, to hospital chaplain, I have continued to be and am always becoming, in the words of St. Irenaeus, ‘fully alive’.

After 10 years in parish ministry, with all its celebrations and challenges, I wanted to spend more time alongside people, hearing their story. I had been encouraged to think I may have been suitable for a more senior clergy role but withdrew from a diocesan appointment during the interview. Such a job would, to me, have been a move away from the coal face, working mostly only with clergy and people of faith! I felt called to something agenda-free or on the edge, being in the middle of people’s lives as they experience change or challenge.  Many theologians have written about noticing God where people are on the edge. This ‘place’ is anywhere and everywhere but is the interface of sacred and secular, at the very heart of human experience.

Coming to work again in a hospital was actually a vital step forward because, as a priest, I feel called to be with those who, often unexpectedly, find they wish to be accompanied as they holistically discover something more of themselves. A recent encounter describes my interpretation today of the phrase ‘nurse or priest or both’. I was contacted urgently by a member of staff to support their team after a traumatic event in their department.  Asked to be among them as they cleared away, I sat with them in the middle of their muddle. As they worked, they talked through what had happened, thinking through how they felt and on many levels considering what they were learning from their experiences, both in head and heart. Familiar with their critical care environment, my two professions came face to face. I knew I had been called to that moment but honoured to be with that team on that day.

Today as a chaplain my work is an example of ‘practical theology’ which means in one’s context to listen to others, to ourselves and to God, using reflection to learn from our story how to develop our practice. This formed the basis of my doctoral research in reflective practice with healthcare professionals, my most recent period of study! Now, with a colleague, telling the story of our chaplaincy team over the past 10 years, we share our discoveries in a chaplaincy textbook that will be published later this year. These are among the joys and challenges of my on-going, fulfilling and utterly privileged journey. It is this continued openness, a willingness to ‘be’ and to ‘become’, to continuously learn, that is the richness of ‘being fully alive’. As a friend recently said of me, marriage to my wife Sandra has also been a sense of continuing ‘to find myself’.

All I have ever wanted is ‘to be’ all that I have ever been called to become.

~   News and Events in the Parish   ~

We are starting to reintroduce our public events, whilst some continue online.

St Nic’s Lunch Update

Now that we are unlocked and summer is upon us, we hope to start again somehow in September with something!

The  current plan is to have a meeting at 11.30 am on Wed 8th September in the Church with a view to understanding what is practical to do in light of the relevant Covid / food  /HSE guidelines and to plan for how we can move forward as well as the shape and frequency of  future events

Wed 29th September is pencilled as a likely date for ‘something’, depending on what we agree is possible with Covid 19 at the time.  Please let Sandra Pearce know if you would like to attend the meeting on 8th September.

Thank you to Sandra for all her time, effort and energy that she has put into this project.  It has taken many phone calls and emails to ascertain a way forward.

Zoom Pub Theology

Now running monthly

A chance to discuss ideas and thoughts about all matter of things theological.

After a short introduction of 5 minutes (or more), the conversation is open.

Meet via Zoom from 7.30 – 8.30pm first Monday of the month, starting June 7th

Topics:       TBA….please let Richard have any suggestions

For a Zoom link or enquiries or suggestions, ring Richard Laugharne (01503-230333) or email on richard.laugharne@nhs.net

All welcome! Click here to go back to top.

___________________________________________________________

Messy Church

meeting in St Germans Methodist Church

Next Messy Church is on Saturday 4th September, 10am to noon at St Germans Priory

Plenty of space for several families, even with Covid restrictions. Please bring a picnic!

Messy Church is a form of church for children and adults that involves creativity, celebration and hospitality – it’s fun!

If you’d like to help out please speak to Evelyn or ring her on 01503 230449

Find out more at https://www.messychurch.org.uk/what-messy-church-and-isnt

____________________________________________________

Events at St Germans Priory Church

____________________________________________________

Advance notice:

Friday September 10th at 7pm, ecumenical evensong with

Hugh, Bishop of St Germans and the Roman Catholic Bishop of St Germans.

The previous visit by the Roman Catholic Bishop was a wonderful and historic, and this time we also have the relatively newly appointed Bishop Philip to complete the occasion. Details to follow.